Proof That Writing Rubrics in Oklahoma Are Designed to Fail Your Kids

I’ve been an English teacher for over 20 years. I know how to teach students to write essays. It is in my blood. I can usually take any student from a mediocre writer or a poor writer to a functional writer. I have worked in districts with zero vertical team and a micromanaging vertical team.

An 8 Step Collaborative Essay Lesson Plan Tailored to Your Student’s Needs

Let’s face it. Many of the prompts your state provides for your students are boring. The students will diligently write to the prompt, but the prompts are usually out of touch with current issues or topics that interest your students. So what is the answer? *Note: Before you launch this lesson plan, be sure to

Reblog: The Author’s Voice: Word Choice and Placement #amwriting

This is a fantastic post. I found this over at The Story Reading Ape’s blog. Go check it out for more like this!

A Sentence Diagramming Lesson Your Students Will Love

One skill lost on many modern students is the ability to break down sentences. Of course, diagramming sentences the old-fashioned way is frowned upon as “outmoded” or “blasé”. Nothing could be further from the truth especially when teaching students with limited sentence construction skills. I developed an idea one day about an activity which requires

Make Some Money By Posting Old Blog Posts to Medium

I stumbled upon a little trick to help myself earn a tiny bit more income on the side: Medium.  Medium.com is a blog publishing site where anyone who has an account (which is free) can write content and get paid. The way you get paid is to write good content and then readers will “clap”

Copywriting… Really?

I’ve been teaching English for over 20 years.  I love the kids.  I love teaching.  The one thing I don’t love is the bureaucracy, the red tape, and sometimes the people with whom I work. Work drama is the pits.  My hope is that people will just learn to work together for the benefit of

I’m Baaaack!

I haven’t blogged for a long time as I spent a long time away.  Boy do I have a lot to talk about on here. I went away from WordPress for a while to pursue upscaling my website to a Squarespace account.  I did that for a year, only to realize that the $140 a

Book Launch: The Shibboleth Code Is Finally Available!

After a long wait and a lot of struggle, the final book in the Five Rims Series is finally available! Description: Guillermo and Mitsuki, the last humans in existence, have survived their escape through the dangerous purple ionic cloud. Their broken gunship floating helpless in space, they are picked up by a gargantuan dreadnaught, healed

Oklahoma Government A Picture of America’s Future

Today I took a trip with a few colleagues to the Oklahoma State Capital.  We arrived in the morning, looked around immediately for our representatives, but unfortunately they were nowhere to be found. I popped up to Rep. Josh Cockroft’s office (Republican) and he had this handy sign on the door: He wouldn’t see us

The Elephant In the Room: My Next Novel and It’s Hopeful Impact

Wow.  It’s been a long time since I’ve posted to this blog. Honestly it’s been an insane two months. On December 5th, my 76 year old mother entered the hospital because of complications following a routine colonoscopy, and I only brought her home a week ago Thursday.  She developed a bleed that wouldn’t stop, so